Last week brought reports that Nvidia confirmed the name of its upcoming dual-GPU card slated for a February launch.
Called the GeForce GTX 590, the card is expected to arrive in the same time frame as AMD's similar offering, the dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990 "Antilles"also set for a supposed February release. Nvidia is also expected to launch the new card in the same manner as it did with the GeForce GTX 580: surprisingly sudden, catching AMD off-guard.
Based on a 40-nm fabrication process, the currently unannounced GTX 590 will reportedly come packed with two GF110 GPUs with 512 CUDA cores each, totaling 1024 CUDA cores. The card will also feature a 2 x 384-bit memory interface, 3 GB of GDDR5 memory and support for DirectX 11.
Nordic Hardware speculates that Nvidia chose to max the CUDA count instead of turning off shader blocks and increasing GPU frequencies, offering a more efficient solution. The dual-GPU card will thus have lower clock frequencies and voltages than the new GeForce GTX 580 with a 244-watt TDP using just one GF110 GPU. For now, it's unknown just how much power the dual-GPU card will actually consume when it hits the market, but expect a lot.
Unnamed sources have also confirmed that the reference design is set. The end product will likely sport a full-cover cooler with a large 90-mm radial fan mounted in the center. The size will be close to what the GeForce GTX 295 (Gen. 2) offers, but may be a bit longer.
With February just a day away, we're looking at a very exciting month. Stay tuned as the week progresses.
